Chapter Twenty-Eight: Corpse in the Fort

 

Anglorae and Kyosti had to wade through chest-high water to reach the fort. The water was so warm they barely shivered, even after climbing back out on the other side. The air was noticeably warmer too. Scrambling around fallen arches and crawling through the sunken battlements, they made their way deeper into the ancient building. Kyosti could hear water dripping all around them, collecting in pools they had to tread through and around.

“What are we looking for?” Anglorae whispered, her voice muffled in the still air. They had come through far enough that not even the wind whistled anymore.

“I’m not sure,” Kyosti confessed. “I don’t know if we’ll even know it when we see it.”

“You mean if I see it.”

“Whatever.”

They rounded another corner; Anglorae screamed, her hands squeezing Kyosti’s arm. He wrenched his knife out of the scabbard. “Tell me where to stab!” he ordered.

She shuddered. “No, it’s just...it’s a body.”

“Fresh?”

“Old. Really old. Skeleton old.”

Kyosti re-sheathed the knife. “Can you see what might have killed them?”

She inched forward. “They have a few broken bones, but that could just be rocks shifting. No, I don’t know...Oh gross, there’s more!”

He decided to be blunt. “Is there lichen anywhere?”

Anglorae twisted in his grip, he supposed to give him a disbelieving look. “You think Kayla’s Lichen did this? Thousands of people over two thousand years?”

“I think it’s weird that neither of us feel ill, even though nobody has even set foot in this building. We’re both, you know…” He couldn’t bring himself to call her an Innis, but he compromised: “...immune.”

Anglorae scoffed, then considered it. “OK, whatever. You’re right.”

It took them almost an hour to find the source of the heat, and really the solution was just following it. The air grew hotter and hotter, stifling almost as they moved farther into the fort, slipping on watery stones and pushing away rotting doors. As far as Anglorae could see and Kyosti could hear, the only things living there were small insects and the spiders that preyed on them. Not even mice.

In an old conference room, with the weak rays of the sun peering through the broken roof, they came across a giant corpse, broken open and glowing with an eerie light. Anglorae described it to Kyosti in hushed whispers, clinging to his arm when he tried to get closer.

“Silver scales like metal. Black eyes, still staring. Looks like they cut it open with a huge axe...there are a lot of skeletons around it. They must have been gathered and died almost instantly. What could have killed them?”

The heat radiating from the fish’s corpse was almost unbearable, but Kyosti pulled her closer. The scales, when he tried to touch them, burned him and he withdrew.

“A fish…” he murmured. “I know lots of stories about fish, but nothing about one that can kill as it dies. Perhaps there was something inside the fish, something that got out when they cut it open? Perhaps the heat was much more intense before, and it burned everyone.”

“But didn’t you say people have died recently? Anyone who comes near? Why doesn’t it hurt us?” Anglorae asked. Kyosti shrugged.

“Lots of things hurt northerners but leave us untouched,” he pointed out. “Is a fish really that unlikely? All this means is this fish is a servant of the Leopard Queen.”

She hmmmed doubtfully. “And what does that mean? That we have to drag it down to the lake and give it a proper burial?” She didn’t sound enthusiastic about this idea.

“We’re not strong enough to do that alone,” Kyosti said, thinking. “Is the roof mostly intact?”

Anglorae sighed, but said, “Yes, the heretic rays of Rokolo’s eye will barely reach the Leopard Queen’s servant here.”

They explored the ruins a bit more--skeletons, spiders, rusted weapons, sinkholes---but eventually there wasn’t anything left to do but leave. Kyosti lagged as Anglorae tugged him across the moat and back out of the plateau. His mind was still on the corpse inside the fort, wondering if he had made the right choice, just leaving it there.

“Do the Seers have any stories about fish?” he asked finally, after they had struggled back up the hill into the forest, the warm air falling behind them at last.

“Obviously, lots.”

“Tell me one.”

She didn’t answer for a long time. Finally, she said, “Of course, you know the story of Lapisara and the Ten Beats of Death.”

“It’s Larisarara, but yes, continue.”

She yanked his arm, enraged. “It’s Lapisara!”

“‘Lapisara’ is a nonsense word! It doesn’t mean anything in Innis! ‘Larisarara’ means ‘the great hand that whispers even in the night’!”

“It is Lapisara, because my father told me so!”

“Well, your father---”

Sometime on the hike back, Kyosti paused and rooted around in the snow among the frozen leaves and rotting logs.

“What are you doing?” Anglorae asked, her disgust clear.

As expected, he found a couple mushrooms. After carefully feeling them, smelling them, and checking their color with Anglorae, he popped one in his mouth and gave the other to her.

“No thanks, I’m not hungry,” she said.

“Don’t you think Sanji and John will think it’s weird if we come back the picture of good health?” Kyosti countered.

Anglorae hesitated, then snatched the mushroom from his hand and ate it.

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Photo by Peter Herrmann on Unsplash